Caldwell's New Handheld ClayCopter Thrower

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Most dedicated shotgun shooters have shot skeet, trap, sporting clays, and possibly even wobble trap. These games are always a ton of fun, partly because of the simple concept. The clay pigeons fly out and you shoot ‘em down. That’s it. But the simplicity is also it’s downfall. Clay pigeons were introduced in 1880, and they haven’t changed in the past 145 years. The ability to change things up is limited by the setup of the course, the type of machine you’re using, or the ability of someone to use a hand thrower.

Like the clay pigeon itself, hand throwers have been around for more than a century. For ease of use and versatility on the fly, there’s no better choice than a hand thrower. You can send the clay pigeons out in any variety of ways all depending on how the person doing the throwing decides its fate. Of course, after a while, your arm can get tired and there’s a bit of a learning curve at first to throwing the clays in a manner that allows the shooters to have a shot at them.

Caldwell’s new ClayCopter changes all of that. The ClayCopter is a handheld device, but it's unlike any other hand-thrower around. This is one that requires no skill or physical effort to use and is, quite frankly, just as fun to be the person doing the throwing as it is to do the shooting.

ClayCopter the New Clay Thrower

The ClayCopter utilizes an electric motor to spin target discs at up to 15,000 RPM. I say “up to” because there are four different speed settings to choose from and they are indicated on the side by a series of four lights. When cranked up to full power, you can easily launch a target disc out to 100+ yards.

The motor is battery-operated, but you don’t have to worry about burning through a ton of batteries. Instead, the ClayCopter uses a USB-C rechargeable battery pack that can launch up to 300 targets on a charge. If you don’t want to wait for a recharge, you can buy spare battery packs. As a little nod to shooters, the battery pack is similar in size to a 20-round AR magazine, and it fits into a “magwell” in the thrower much like an actual magazine would.

Operating the ClayCopter is as easy as holding the grip and pulling the trigger. Of course, safety is of the utmost importance, and there’s a secondary grip safety at the front of the unit that you must hold onto and depress for the motor to wind up and spin off a target. This means you’ve got to use both hands to operate the ClayCopter, which can be a little odd at first, but you get used to it quickly. 

Once you get the hang of using the ClayCopter, you can start getting fancy with it. Try holding it up and spinning it in a figure-eight pattern as the motor winds up and launches the target. Or you can hold it low and get the targets to skip across the ground like small game animals. Switch up speeds: launch one all the way up at four-power and then the next one at one-power so that the shooter doesn’t have a solid grasp on speed and target lead.

If shooting singles isn’t challenging enough for you, or perhaps you want to go head-to-head with a friend, the ClayCopter is capable of loading and launching two target discs at the same time. You simply click them into place on top of each other and then pull the trigger like normal. Speaking of the targets, let’s talk about the unique targets that the ClayCopter uses.

New Targets Bring New Possibilities

As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, the ClayCopter does not use traditional clay pigeons. Instead, it uses special target discs that come in two different sizes: 90mm and 110mm. For those of us who measure things in freedom units, that’s approximately 3.5” and 4.3” respectively. Unlike a traditional clay’s solid design, ClayCopter targets remind me of a cross between fan blades and a bullseye target’s rings. That is, they’re not solid and are designed to fly more aerodynamically and realistically. Since they weigh less than a traditional clay, they are more susceptible to wind and tend to mimic the often-erratic flight pattern of a live bird.

Not only do these targets look different, but they’re also made different. A ClayCopter target disc is made from an “agriculturally sourced bioplastic formula” that is specially designed to break down when exposed to heat, moisture, and microorganisms. Whereas traditional clays can take a year or more to break down in the environment, a ClayCopter target breaks down in just 45 days. This also means that these targets are Intertek Green Leaf tested and verified, which is something that cannot be said by any clay pigeon.

This difference in material and design means that the targets are 85% lighter than traditional clays and they take up 45% less space. A stack of 50 traditional clays weighs about 12 pounds and stands approximately 22” high. A stack of 50 of the 110mm ClayCopter targets weighs just 2.75 pounds and stands less than 13” high.

Perhaps best of all, they’re designed so that they only break when shot - not when being transported or accidentally dropped. Sure, you might get lucky and be able to recover some of your un-shot clays to be used again, but there’s a very high likelihood that the clays are going to break when they hit the ground. That is not the case with a ClayCopter target. If you don’t hit it, then it doesn’t break. Period. Go grab it, launch it, and shoot at it again until you hit it.

Since everything about the ClayCopter is designed to be small, light, and portable, you can easily pack the launcher and one or two tubes of targets into your range bag. No more carrying boxes of clays, getting a tired/sore arm from using a hand thrower, or lugging around a full-size traditional clay launcher and a car battery to power it.

I’ve always enjoyed shooting clays, but the Caldwell ClayCopter really is something else. It adds new elements of fun, competition, and even a bit of whimsy back into an activity that has remained relatively unchanged since its introduction. I’m certainly in no position to offer anyone any kind of a “satisfaction or your money back” type of guarantee, but I’m supremely confident that if you get your hands on a ClayCopter, you’ll be very happy that you did. So go ahead, breathe some new life into your clay shooting. It’ll be the most fun you’ve had in quite some time.

The ClayCopter Launcher has an MSRP of $219.99 and spare batteries have an MSRP of $70.99. The target discs, regardless of size, are packed in tubes of 50 and the MSRP for a bundle of 200 is $63.96.

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